Half-Life

Developer: Valve L.L.C. Publisher: Sierra On-Line, Inc. Technology: GoldSource (id Tech 2) Release Date: November 19, 1998 Chat-Room: #halflife Buy Physical: ebay.com Buy Digital: Steam

Info

ADVANCED GRAPHICS ENGINE
16-bit rendering (65,000 colors), dynamic lighting, blurring and translucency means your opponents are as lifelike as they are deadly. Half-Life has developed all these features in software so now they're an integral part of the gameplay, not just eye-candy. Of course, if you do have OpenGL, Direct3D, or MMX hardware, things will look mind-bogglingly cool.

ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE
Half-Life's enemies are also remarkably--even terrifyingly--intelligent. The grunts, for example, work together, lay down cover fire, flank you and use grenades to flush you out. You'd better think as fast as they do.

SKELETAL ANIMATION SYSTEM
The all new animation system makes monsters more spectacularly menacing than ever before. Half-Life's characters have the highest polygon count, and the most fluid and complex motion ever seen in an action game.

SCRIPTED SEQUENCES
Half-Life has a life of its own. Events will occur and characters will evolve even if you are not around to see them. You can intervene in these scenes, and dramatically alter the outcome of the mission! So think twice before adopting a 'shoot first, ask questions later' strategy, because one of your potential targets might be able to help you out of a tight spot later on.

32-PERSON INTERNET MULTIPLAYER
Take on up to 31 other human opponents on popular multiplayer sites including WON.NET, or through services such as Gamespy -- or set up your own server. You will also be able to use graffiti and bullet holes to track where you've been, leave yourself hints, or taunt other players!

taken from the back of the box

Screens

Magazine features

Source code availability

Your only option for a fully open clone of Half-Life is Frag-Net's own FreeHL.

How-to-play On-line

The original disc release is not playable out of the box, however you can grab fragnet.lst and place it in your valve/ directory and launch the game with the command-line parameter:

hl.exe -comm fragnet.lst

That's all! You can also overwrite woncomm.lst if you want it to be permanent.

The digital version requires the proprietary Steam client, which is not available on most platforms. The multi-player there works out of the box, but is incompatible with any other version.

Downloads

Third-party downloads

You can find loads of custom levels and mods to play with your install of Half-Life by visiting:

Along with the legendary:

Both sites have been around since the early 00s and have been kept alive by the community with their ever growing databases. We salute them!

Most levels and mods are slowly working under FreeHL.